We’ve made it Broncos Country! The first week of free agency is in the books and never would any of us have guessed it, but the Broncos did not sign a single free agent coming from another team. By some counts, they are 16-0 towards bringing their own guys back if you include the in-season extensions dating back to last year.
Surely they’ll eventually sign some outside guys, but they already sit at at a roster level where you could easily see them fill the rest to 90-man limit with draft picks and
undrafted signings. We’ll just have to wait and see!
Broncos daily recap
The weekend has arrived and the Denver Broncos have literally re-signed all of their guys from last year. It’s time to transition our attention to the 2026 NFL Draft and where they should spend that draft capital to improve the roster.
Broncos re-sign RB Jaleel McLaughlin with a one-year deal
The Broncos played it smart with this one. After declining to tender Jaleel McLaughlin before free agency opened, Denver let the market set his price — then brought him back on a one-year deal worth $1.145 million with a $125K signing bonus. That’s a fraction of what the tender would have cost. With McLaughlin back, every member of last year’s backfield — J.K. Dobbins, RJ Harvey, McLaughlin, Tyler Badie, and Adam Prentice — is now under contract heading into 2026.Broncos have restructured Jonathon Cooper’s contract clearing $8.2M in cap space
Denver continues to work the cap like a Rubik’s Cube. The Broncos converted $10.2 million of Jonathon Cooper’s base salary into a signing bonus, spreading the hit over the remaining life of his deal and dropping his 2026 cap number from $14 million down to $5.8 million. That’s the second restructure of the offseason after doing the same with Quinn Meinerz, and it gives the front office roughly $21 million in available cap space to work with going forward.AFC West Free Agency Recap — Week 1
Want to know what the rest of the division has been up to? The Chiefs added reigning Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker III at running back and re-signed Travis Kelce, but lost cornerback Trent McDuffie to the Rams in a trade. The Raiders went big, landing center Tyler Linderbaum on a record three-year, $81 million deal and edge rusher Kwity Paye on a three-year, $48 million contract. The Chargers focused on the trenches, bringing in Tyler Biadasz, Cole Strange, and Trevor Penning while welcoming back Khalil Mack. Denver’s division rivals have been far more active in the external market — the question is whether patience pays off for the Broncos.
Under the radar
Broncos cornerback Ja’Quan McMillian signed his tender today. His agent, Deryk Gilmore said he hopes this leads to an extension saying, “I would love for him to have many years with the Broncos. Hopefully we can work something out sooner than later.”
The FEED happenings
MHR member BroncosNut talks free agency and what it all means. Could Denver be looking at a boundary corner soon?
MHR member GratefulBronco talks about the disappointment in the lack of external free agents, but maybe the focus should be on how well the team is developing their own players and extending them.
Post your own thoughts on MHR’s Feed.
Weekend discussion
Let’s talk salary cap
Looking over the Top 51, the Broncos are sitting at $23.6M in cap space after the first week of free agency. That number does not appear to include the veteran minimums given to Lil’Jordan Humphre, Adam Prentice, Matt Henningsen, Lucal Krull, and, now, Jaleel McLaughlin. However, none of them are going to shift things much. Maybe a million or two lower in actual cap space once those contracts are added and the Top 51 changes a bit.
Spotrac goes on to project $11.7M in cap space needed for their 2026 NFL Draft class, so they really don’t have a ton of wiggle room anyway. There is a plenty of wiggle room if they did those simple restructures, but it seems like they are content not to spend big in this free agent class. Maybe we were all just higher on free agents than they were and, frankly, maybe they are correct in that projection.
With that additional $10M in cap space, I could see some extensions in the works. Marvin Mims Jr. is a guy talked about as getting one and now I would add Ja’Quan McMillian. If that is what they end up utilizing the extra cap space for, wouldn’t we all be happy about that?
Looking ahead to 2027, they will need to start thinking about a Bo Nix extension too. You have a lot of guys hitting some big numbers on the cap hit side of things. The thinking might be that Sean Payton really likes this roster and wants to run it back one more season before significant roster turnover must happen. This is where the age wall cap casualties become very plausible. Next year, here are the players 30+ and their cap hits:
- Courtland Sutton, $28.4M
- Garett Bolles, $26.8M
- Mike McGlinchey, $23.7M
- Zach Allen, $19.9M
- D.J. Jones, $14.6M
- Alex Singleton, $9M
- Justin Strnad, $7.4M
- Adam Trautman, $6.8M
- Luke Wattenburg, $5.7M
- Ben Powers, $4.3M (void year)
There were a few more after Powers, but I stopped it there. I am also surprised how old this team is. There will be a lot of starters between 28-29 next year besides the above 30+. That really put things into perspective for me when trying to figure out why Payton would be so intent on running it all back.
The team is fresh off a 14-3 season and would have likely gone to the Super Bowl had Bo Nix not gotten injured. And they probably could have won it if JK Dobbins hadn’t been injured. I think losing him tanked their chances against a team like Seattle anyway, but still. I see the logic behind running it all back in 2026.
What do you think of the Broncos salary cap situation and where this team’s roster might be after this season? Is the championship window actually more narrow than we assumed? With a franchise quarterback, they can certainly snap back quickly, but I’m not confident they can turn a roster of that many aging starters around quickly enough.
Reminder that the roundup for Friday’s will be our weekend discussion thread as well. Anything goes as long as it falls within the rules. Be nice, play nice, and go Broncos!
